Title: The agility challenge during organic growth

Authors: Rui Pires; Leandro Pereira; Álvaro Dias; Rui Gonçalves; Renato Lopes da Costa; Rui Vinhas da Silva

Addresses: ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' BRU – Business Research Unit, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' PIAGET Almada, Almada, Portugal ' BRU-IUL – Business Research Unit, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal ' BRU-IUL – Business Research Unit, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract: The growth of organisations naturally increases their complexity, often leading to a loss of agility which affects business performance. This research aims to study strategies for maintaining agility that keep up with the growth and consequent increase in complexity of organisations. This study was conducted with 21 interviews with consulting managers with the aim of knowing the main impacts, causes, and perceptions of organisational agility. The results showed that the main causes for the loss of agility are the non-prioritisation of organisational problems and the lack of standardisation and vagueness of processes, which has as main impacts the loss of efficiency, business, employee motivation and increased delivery time. To increase organisational agility, the main findings suggest critical actions to be taken: define and standardise processes, unify values and practices, and create coaching and training programs to consolidate concepts.

Keywords: organisational agility; consulting; efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2023.130660

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2023 Vol.20 No.3, pp.310 - 333

Received: 20 Jan 2022
Accepted: 03 Sep 2022
Published online: 02 May 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article